Robotics in Education Initiatives in Europe- Status, Shortcomings and Open Questions

Abstract. For more than a decade now robotics in education has gained a lot of attention from teachers, researchers, politicians, authorities and other stake holders. During the years a great number of methodologies, courses, projects, initiatives and competitions had been developed. With the present position paper the authors who have been active in different educational robotics initiatives for several years like to summarize the status of educational robotics in Europe and to relate it to the state of the art as it is documented at international symposia and workshops. Starting from these observations the authors point out shortcom-ings and open questions and propose pragmatic strategies for future activities in Europe. The long-term goal is to make robotics in education stronger, more seri-ous and evaluated and thus sustainable in order to achieve increasing technology competence of young people and to attract them for technical professional ca-reers. Keywords: educational robotics, robot competitions, European and International trends in edu-cational robotics